Thursday, May 28, 2009

Let's be Creative

So I successfully completed my really major goal for this year, which was finishing seminary, but I have a couple of other goals that I would like to complete this year, and those are both creative endeavors. One of the things I want to do is participate in National Novel Writing Month, which is November. I have never written a novel, but joining with thousands of others to try to do it in a month sounds like a worthwhile activity. I don't really have any ideas right now as to what I would write, but I have until November to figure that out.

However, the creative activity I would like to between now and November is make my own board/card game. I did this once in college (it simulated a fighting game style kung-fu fight), and since then I have had a lot of half ideas. My goal would be to fully develop a game and post it as a print and play game on the website boardgamegeek. I think the best way to acomplish this is to pick one of my ideas and run with it. Of course I have had a lot of them, so as best as I can describe them, which one sounds best to you?

idea #1: I actually semi-created this game about five years ago. The idea is that each person creates a gladiator and then fights it out with dice rolls and a small pool of selected tactics cards. This game essentially takes character creation of a Role Playing Game and distills it down to player vs. Player combat.

idea #2: This game would be a simple strategy game that uses dice to recreate video game style shooting matches. The base mechanic would be "rock-paper-scissors" So grunt soldiers would be strongest against scouts, scouts would be stronger against heavy soldiers, and heavy soldiers would be strongest against grunt soldiers. Each solider type would have their own unique attributes and abilities, as well as their own deck of weapons and special cards. In addition to that, each unit type has a terrain type that they are strongest in, and the game board would be modular so various "maps" could be made. Video game style matches such as capture points, attack/defend, and CTF would be played with this game.

idea #3: This game would be a 2 player deduction game. There would be X amount of tiles and the tiles would be arranged in some sort of grid. Each tile represents a person attending some sort of diplomatic ball in the cold war era. One player controls two of them and the other player controls the rest of them. The player controlling the majority of the tile secretly selects one tile to be the undercover spy. The player controlling two tiles secretly selects one to be the CIA contact and the other to be the KGB contact. The goal of the game for the player controlling the majority is to survive so many turns, or successfully say the pass phrase to the CIA agent. The other player attempts to catch the undercover agent with the KGB agent. The player controlling the CIA/KGB will move one and then select an adjacent tile to say the pass phrase to. The other player can then have so many tiles exchange places. I think this could be a good game of cat and mouse, while the one player tries to root out the undercover agent, and the undercover agent player tries to hide out or deduct who the CIA agent is.

idea #4: This game idea is heavily inspired by the video game Rainbow Six Vegas. The players each control a small special forces team and rely heavily on cover to either eliminate the other team or plant a bomb. One of the ways I envision this game working is that players take their moves simultaneously instead of being a turn based game.

idea #5: This game idea has inspiration from the video game Fable. It is a card game where players play various cards that essentially generate "resources" of combat prowess, renown, and acumen. So for example a player might play a card called "Married for Money" that will generate +2 Acumen per turn, but in order to play that card the player needs a renown of 8 (which other cards would have earned him). The goal is to get high enough ratings in these three areas to successfully complete quest cards that are worth victory points. When a quest is completed all of the cards currently in play for a player except one are discarded, and the player begins working on a new quest. To draw cards, players can do a blind draw or there will X amount of cards turned up that players can buy by using their resources. However to buy these cards will essentially be an auction of sorts and this will be how players have more direct interaction in this game.

idea #6: This is an idea that I have only thought about in the past couple of months while playing a lot of Left 4 Dead on the Xbox and Dominion on the table. It would be a Zombie card game. The goal would be to live longer than the other players. Each player would take turn picking various mini-decks that represent locations. The mini decks would be combined to make a larger communal deck. This does not have the deck building of Dominion exactly, but it would still allow for a lot of variety. As this is one of my most recent ideas, I have not been able to throughly think out the mechanics.